Visiting Rome’s Brooklyn—Hipsters, Tattoos, and Strollers in Bars

“It’s like Bedford Street—no, Bedford Avenue? Is that it?” Tommaso, my friend and Motorino driver for the afternoon, shouted back at me as we careened past a ring of ancient aqueducts, over cobblestones, and away from Rome’s center. I laughed and shouted back, “Avenue!” We rounded a corner onto a wide road with elevated train tracks down the middle, buildings covered with graffiti, and a group of nuns arguing on the sidewalk.

Our destination was Pigneto, which The New York Times, in its endless quest to apply a five-borough taxonomy to the rest of the world, has labeled “Rome’s Answer to Bushwick.” A neighborhood about 25 minutes by metro from the city center, Pigneto is known for its restaurants, bars, and nightlife. It’s home to students of nearby La Sapienza, one of the largest universities in Rome, and young families. As a Brooklyn resident and lifetime New Yorker, I was determined to find out what made this place worthy of its moniker.

We stopped to park the Motorino near a miniature fairground named, appropriately, “Dumbo Park,” and from there, made our way down the winding streets on foot. Very different from the center of the ancient city, the outskirts of Rome are bright, open, and dotted with relatively new apartment buildings and small homes with private gardens, some visible from the street. Above were balconies laden with plants, laundry, and outdoor seating; around us were the spindly maritime pine trees that give the neighborhood its name.

The neighborhood’s center is Via del Pigneto, a wide pedestrian street lined with cafés and bustling with young people enjoying the afternoon sun. At one end of the street, there’s a small flower market. I took stock of the Brooklyn signifiers along the way: fixed-gear bicycles, 3; full-sleeve tattoos, 5; hyper-stylized facial hair, 2; ironic political street art, 16+.

In search of an afternoon cocktail, we turned off the street into an alley shaded with trees and found [Rosti] (http://www.rostialpigneto.it/), a bar and restaurant housed in a former mechanic’s workshop. It was described in an e-mail from an Italian friend (and new mother) as “a place where bikes are parked and has a playground for kids. . . If you don’t have a baby you are NO ONE.” Baby-less, we decided to settle in there anyway.

The bar looks out onto a large gravel courtyard filled with colorful tables and chairs, surrounded by low trees and the walls of buildings. Although our six-euro “Americanos” came, as is often the case in Italian cafés, with free miniature bowls of peanuts and potato chips, there was something decidedly Brooklyn about the whole experience. Jamie xx played softly on the stereo as we sat below a string of Edison bulbs, a young couple with a child in a stroller joked at a folding table nearby, and a chic-looking mutt dozed off in the shade. If I had Instagrammed the scene, you’d just as easily believed I was in Park Slope, or a particularly large courtyard in Williamsburg.

The tourist mobs of the city center felt ages away. Not a word of English was spoken, and there were no selfie-stick peddlers (a common fixture of the large piazzas) in sight. If the Spanish Steps are Times Square, Via del Pigneto is Court Street: a place where locals go about their days, working, eating, drinking, and raising their families.

Pigneto’s past, like that of many Brooklyn neighborhoods, looks quite different from its present. It was once a place known for drugs and violence, and while it has recently gained the reputation of a creative enclave, the perception among some locals remains. (An aunt who hadn’t been in years warned me to avoid “drug dealers lining the streets.”)

While, sure, we could call any neighborhood Brooklyn-esque by just the wall art or multiple cocktail bars, Pigneto’s “essential Brooklyn-ness” also lies in the fact that it’s simply a nice, more affordable place to live within reach of a city center. If Wes Anderson had directed the Lizzie McGuire movie (which, in true mom-fashion, my mother referred to in an Instagram comment), he would have set it in Pigneto.

Later that night I returned to the city center, back to the throng of tourists attempting to order gelato with thick accents and craft the perfect selfie in front of the Pantheon. Over a glass of wine near bustling Piazza Navona, I asked some new friends for their opinions on my afternoon excursion. Like New Yorkers on Brooklyn, their opinions of Pigneto were varied: “It’s fun!” and “It’s so far away!” were common refrains. One of them, a young interior designer who grew up in the city, exclaimed, “Of course! It’s, ah, how do you say—‘kingdom of hipsters’?”

Perched high above the Bay of Naples and the Faraglioni rocks is Unghia Marina—a private home in Southern Italy, photographed in 1989.

Aarons is especially known for his work capturing aristocracy’s bathing beauties—here, Marina Rava, right, and Carla Vuccino, left, catch some rays on the stern of a sleek runabout in 1958.

Another retro swimsuit—this time with Sunfish: Bettina Graziana is photographed here in front of her villa on the Costa Smeralda in 1964.

Per Sweet’s caption, “Hanging out at Ira Furstenberg’s new Porto Rotondo villa, 1968, are, from left, Duchess Ines Torlonia, who has a successful antique jewelry business; a fashion model in striking African caftan; an English friend reclining; and the photographer Patrick Lichfield, who also happens to be the 5th Earl of Lichfield and a first cousin once removed of Queen Elizabeth II.”

The Pucci-family villa is located in Val d’Elsa, Italy, a picturesque hamlet and area of Tuscany; this photograph, from 1991, shows Laudomia and Alessandro Pucci on the lawn of the home, titled Graniaolo.

Fashion’s late lamented Gianni Versace also kept a villa in his native Italy, called Villa Fontanelle; it was situated on Lake Como, an elite destination for vacationers (and George Clooney) that is close to Milan, Versace’s hometown. (The home was sold after Versace’s death in 1997.) The designer is seen here on a boat with Lalla Spagnol.

The cover of the book.

Perched high above the Bay of Naples and the Faraglioni rocks is Unghia Marina—a private home in Southern Italy, photographed in 1989.

Aarons is especially known for his work capturing aristocracy’s bathing beauties—here, Marina Rava, right, and Carla Vuccino, left, catch some rays on the stern of a sleek runabout in 1958.

Another retro swimsuit—this time with Sunfish: Bettina Graziana is photographed here in front of her villa on the Costa Smeralda in 1964.

Per Sweet’s caption, “Hanging out at Ira Furstenberg’s new Porto Rotondo villa, 1968, are, from left, Duchess Ines Torlonia, who has a successful antique jewelry business; a fashion model in striking African caftan; an English friend reclining; and the photographer Patrick Lichfield, who also happens to be the 5th Earl of Lichfield and a first cousin once removed of Queen Elizabeth II.”

The Contessa Consuelo Crespi—an American-born model and former Diana Vreeland protégée who became the toast of international society—is seen here looking bejeweled at right with Pilar Crespi, her stunningly beautiful daughter. The pair are on the Costa Smeralda in 1968.

These ancient, terracotta-tile roofs were restored as part of a public-works undertaking of Count Roberto and Countess Maria Teresa Guicciardini Corsi Salviati (phew!), shown here relaxing on the top. The ancient village of Castello di Gargonza, where this was taken, dates from the 13th century.

The Pucci-family villa is located in Val d’Elsa, Italy, a picturesque hamlet and area of Tuscany; this photograph, from 1991, shows Laudomia and Alessandro Pucci on the lawn of the home, titled Graniaolo.

Fashion’s late lamented Gianni Versace also kept a villa in his native Italy, called Villa Fontanelle; it was situated on Lake Como, an elite destination for vacationers (and George Clooney) that is close to Milan, Versace’s hometown. (The home was sold after Versace’s death in 1997.) The designer is seen here on a boat with Lalla Spagnol.